What do you lament about? What do you wish were different? What’s something you’ve been slogging through — and you don’t know if you’ll ever get through it? What is it that you’re tempted to give up on? In the face of what circumstance are you tempted to say, “Forget it!”?

We’re wrapping up a six-part series about “Living a Relevant Life,” and we can’t say we’re finished until we deal with the issue of being tempted to give up. The principle we’re going to explore is simple: we can’t expect to live relevant lives, having an impact on the lives of other people and carrying out God’s will, unless we carry through with things. There’s a critical place in God’s plans for our lives for perseverance and persistence.

PERSEVERANCE PAYS
Common sense and experience show that perseverance pays. My favorite example is Thomas Edison, the inventor of many things, including a successful light bulb. Other people had experimented with light generated by electricity, but what was still needed was a light bulb that would last. (As often as I have to change a light bulb at home, it sometimes makes me wonder whether we still need a long-lasting light bulb, but I know that’s just my imagination.) Edison tried over three thousand filaments before he discovered that a piece of carbonized sewing thread worked best. His light bulb burned for 13 1/2 hours. What if he had stopped trying — had given up — after the 2,999th try?

By the way, Edison’s contribution to illuminating our world goes well beyond the light bulb. He had to create an entire electrical system to light the world. Besides the light bulb, he developed the parallel circuit, an improved dynamo to generate electricity, an underground conductor network, a device to maintain constant voltage, safety fuses, and light sockets with on-off switches. This was all done to produce dependable electricity! Talk about persistence and perseverance!

The classic children’s book A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeline L’Engle (who, by the way, died within the last month), won many awards, including the Newberry Medal. The book was rejected by the first 26 publishers she submitted it to. What if she had given up after the 26th rejection letter?

The best-selling book Chicken Soup for the Soul and its one hundred-plus spin-offs wouldn’t exist if the authors had given up after their 200th rejection. They persevered — and the rest is publishing history.

We could go on and on with examples of the importance of applying persistence and perseverance to life. What’s God’s take on this? What place does our persevering have in His plans for us? How does He help us to persevere?

JEREMIAH LAMENTS
As we said at the outset, we can easily find reasons to lament about this or that in our lives, wishing things were different and being tempted to give up on their ever changing. Let’s take a look at a real man of God, a prophet of God who’s highlighted in the Old Testament of the Bible. His name was Jeremiah, and there’s a whole book of the Bible that goes by his name. If you read it you’ll see that he had a really tough time trying to be a prophet for God. The basic message that God gave him was that his country, the land of Judah, was going to be conquered. That kind of doom-and-gloom message doesn’t make you many friends; it made Jeremiah seem anti-patriotic.

Then what Jeremiah had prophesied actually happened. Babylon conquered Judah, destroying Jerusalem in 586 B.C. Everyone who lived in Judah had something to lament about, including Jeremiah. He wrote down his laments in a book that’s called, not too surprisingly, the book of Lamentations. For instance he wrote, “I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me.” (Lamentations 3:19-20) The nation was overrun and the capital city of Jerusalem was destroyed; it must have looked like a hopeless situation to Jeremiah, so he wrote a lament that was a book long! Let’s see what God inspired him to write, because it might hold the key to how we should deal with life when we lament about what’s wrong, and it might show us how we can have what it takes to persevere.

GOD’S CARE CAN KEEP US KEEPING ON
It’s interesting that after lamenting in the above-quoted verses, the next thing that Jeremiah wrote is “Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope:” (Lamentations 3:21) What did he remind himself of that gave him hope? (Hope is the key to persevering and persisting. If you have hope, you can keep on keeping on; if you feel hopeless, you soon quit — so we ought to be curious about what Jeremiah called to mind that was so special.)

Jeremiah wrote, “Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” (Lamentations 3:22-23)

What kept Jeremiah going, going, going like the Eveready Bunny is that his life was defined by an overwhelming conviction that God’s love is always there, no matter what. Because of a sense of God’s love in his life, the circumstances of life didn’t consume him. He declared that God’s compassion never fails, that there’s always a fresh awareness of it every morning, and that God is always faithful that way. God’s compassionate presence and help are a daily renewable resource that we can always count on.

It’s good to think of this verse every morning when we wake up and aren’t happy or enthused about what the day holds for us. It’s good to reaffirm that we can rely on a fresh infusion of God’s love and compassion for the new day. We may not feel that we have what it takes to get through a whole week, but just for today we can know that God is there for us — and that when tomorrow comes He’ll be available with a fresh sense of His presence.

Remember what Jesus taught us to pray in His model prayer for us? “Give us this day our daily bread.” (Luke 11:3) He didn’t have us pray for our weekly supply of bread or our monthly supply of bread — just for today’s.

What Jeremiah wrote next is also helpful: “I say to myself, . . .” What do we say to ourselves when we’re at the breaking point and we’re ready to give up? We grumble to ourselves, usually saying something negative. We might mumble phrases like “This is it!” or “I’ve had enough!” or “I can’t take any more!” What did Jeremiah say to himself? “I say to myself, ‘The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.’” (Lamentations 3:24) He said that God is his portion; what does that mean? It goes back to the first priest God ever installed: Moses’ brother Aaron. When God brought the people of Israel into the promised land He divided the land between the twelve tribes of Israel. Not so with the priests and Levites: God said to Aaron, “You will have no inheritance in their land, nor will you have any share among them; I am your share and your inheritance among the Israelites.” (Numbers 18:20) Aaron wasn’t going to be given land as an inheritance. His inheritance would be the Lord’s direct provision for his life. What a powerful image!

Jeremiah was saying that the Lord Himself was his portion. How did Jeremiah respond to that idea? He wrote, “Therefore I will wait for him.” (Lamentations 3:24) He was going to exhibit patience. He would wait, persevering and persisting. (Actually, the word Jeremiah used in the Hebrew that’s translated as “wait” is the same word that he used in verse 21 when he stated, “Therefore I have hope.” It’s not surprising that you can use the words “hope” and “wait” interchangeably, because when you can hope you can wait. When you lose hope, you become impatient and can’t wait any longer.

When we’re faced with discouragement, defeat, and the desire to give up we should do what Jeremiah did. He called to mind (as he put it in verse 21) and he said to himself (as he put it in verse 24) that the Lord is compassionate and loving, with a faithfulness that’s new every morning — and the Lord is all he really needed.

THE WORK GOD DOES IN OUR PERSEVERING
If God is loving and compassionate, as Jeremiah reminded us, He must have good reasons for requiring perseverance and persistence from us. As it turns out, He does — at least that’s what other places in the Bible remind us of. The apostle Paul wrote, “We also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.” (Romans 5:3-4) God uses our efforts to persevere to build our character, and to eventually give us hope that can help us persevere even more!

The apostle James wrote, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” (James 1:2-4) It’s the same idea: perseverance matures us, making us more complete and more the way God wants us to be.

This is very good to remember. Even while we’re trying to persevere we’re usually thinking about a situation being over with. What we need to call to mind and say to ourselves, as Jeremiah put it, is that God is using this difficult work of persevering for His good, grand purpose of changing us for the better!

Perseverance isn’t just something that will get us through a situation. It’s something that’s making us more the people God wants us to be, even while we’re still doing the difficult work of persevering.

If we give in to the temptation to give up, we’re giving up the opportunity to be more who God wants us to be. Over the 32 years of my ministry here I’ve seen people who have gotten upset and backed out of a ministry, or even left the church, because of someone who hurt them or someone with whom they didn’t see eye to eye. Other people in the same situation didn’t leave; they persevered, working through the situation, and eventually reconciled. The people who didn’t persevere missed out on God’s greatest work in the situation. They’ve never resolved the issue or issues, never worked through them, because they quit too soon! God’s best is only revealed to us as we do the work of persevering! When we give up and walk away, we give up what God has in store for us!

What situation are you dealing with in which you feel defeated and are tempted to give up? The key is to persevere — but remember, we don’t do this on our own! As you think about your challenging situation that at times may seem hopeless, remember what Jeremiah said: “Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”

So hang in there! Persevere! Persist! Believe it or not, that’s part of God’s loving, compassionate plan for your life!